The Judy Chicago Collaboration

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Collaboration

The Judy Chicago Portal bridges Judy Chicago collections housed in three institutions: Penn State University, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Bringing together a public university library, a private institutional library, and a museum allows—in this rare collaboration—for the potential of each repository to consider and embrace new audiences and their collective interests in Judy Chicago’s oeuvre and overall impact.

National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA)

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is developing the definitive visual archive of artist, author, educator and feminist Judy Chicago. Covering the span of her career, this unique visual archive will document Chicago’s creative life.

Dinner Party slide set, China-Painted Plates, 1979.

So You Want to be a China Painter: a short explanation of china painting processes and materials by Judy Chicago.

Schlesinger Library, Harvard

The Judy Chicago Papers, 1947-2004, at Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, includes personal and professional correspondence, resumes, writings, drafts, research notes, journals, interviews, questionnaires, gallery catalogs and announcements, clippings, photographs, etc., relating to Chicago's personal and professional lives. Related collections include Judy Chicago Audiotapes and Judy Chicago Videotapes. This collection was given to the library by Chicago. The Schlesinger Library specializes in resources for research on the history of women in America.

Penn State University

The Eberly Family Special Collections Library is home to the Judy Chicago art education collection, 1970-2011. The collection is comprised of art, textual, and audio-visual, material related to Judy Chicago’s art and work as a feminist pedagogue, which includes material created by Judy Chicago, as well as her students and her non-profit foundation, Through the Flower.

Penn State’s Art Education program hosts the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection, which is an online portal that allows visitors to engage with Judy Chicago’s Participatory Art Pedagogy and The Dinner Party Curriculum. The collection also includes a dialogue portal that facilitates an online conversation about Chicago’s work and feminist art pedagogy.

The Judy Chicago collections at Penn State are marked by their focus on the pedagogical elements of Judy Chicago’s work. Below are the introduction, which is authored by Judy Chicago, and a table of contents of the encounters and lesson plans found in the Dinner Party Curriculum Project. Additionally, there are samples of graphic panels that take viewers on a tour of the At Home Project with Judy Chicago’s student, named James. Finally, there are images of Judy Chicago working with students at her Collaborative Art Making Workshop in New Mexico in 1994. All of these items are a part of the Judy Chicago art education collection, 1970-2011.

About Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago (1939-) is a noted feminist artist, author, and educator. She was born in Chicago as Judy Cohen, but later changed her name in protest of the male social dominance reflected by traditional naming practices. Chicago received her bachelor of art degree in 1962 and her master of art degree in 1964, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has also been granted five honorary doctoral degrees, three in fine arts and two in humane letters. She currently resides in Belen, New Mexico.

​​ Chicago pioneered a feminist approach to art and art education at California State University, Fresno, in the early 1970s.

She then brought her program to Cal-Arts, where she team-taught with Miriam Schapiro, producing with their students the ground-breaking Womanhouse project. In 1974, Chicago turned her attention to the subject of women's history to create her most well-known work, The Dinner Party, which was executed between 1974 and 1979 with the participation of hundreds of volunteers. Other artwork Chicago produced over the next several decades includes: Birth Project; PowerPlay; The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light; Resolutions: A Stitch in Time; If Women Ruled the World; and Judy Chicago Tapestries Woven by Audrey Cowan.

Chicago has also worked with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, to develop various community and inter-institutional art projects. Her art is marked by an attention to process, collaboration, and a feminist analytical viewpoint. Her work has been exhibited in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, and featured in international publications as well. In 1999, Chicago returned to teaching with a succession of appointments at various institutions around the United States, including: Indiana University, Bloomington; Duke University; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Western Kentucky University; and Vanderbilt University. Chicago is the author of numerous books, including two autobiographies: Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist, 1975, and Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist, 1996. She has also received many honors, from National Endowment of the Arts grants in 1976 and 1977 to the Visionary Woman Award from the Moore College of Art and Design in 2004 and the 38th Governor's Award for Excellence from New Mexico in 2011. From: https://www.libraries.psu.edu/findingaids/9028.htm

Future

As the project grows, our endeavors will highlight the impact of Judy’s work and feminist practice via art and art education for which she is celebrated and seen as a pioneer. Through a phased-approach, our goal is to provide increased access and pathways online to the majority of Judy Chicago’s collections by showcasing unique collections held in various geographic settings and enabling thematic linking between them. Visitors to the portal will ultimately be able to view a wider selection of materials, explore pedagogical and creative projects, and engage with a larger community of researchers.

Enhance description and create pathways linking Judy Chicago collections and materials held at different institutions

Establish a travel grants program that would allow researchers to travel between the collaborative institutions to explore the breadth of the Judy Chicago collections

Exhibit a thematic Judy Chicago digital experience built from coordinating materials across institutions

Embark on an ambitious digitization effort to make accessible the content spanning the varied impacts of Judy Chicago across decades and disciplines

Engage and promote community dialogues with feminist values of the digital growing archives and collaborative curricular encounters

Judy Chicago Art Education Award

Through the Flower, a nonprofit art organization, invites artists, scholars and educators to apply for the 2019 Judy Chicago Art Education Award. The award was established in 2011 to support projects that use Judy Chicago materials found at any of the three institutions that will comprise the Judy Chicago Portal. More information about the award.

Independent scholar and teaching artist Rebecca Goldschmidt is the recipient of the 2016 Through the Flower Research Travel Award. Rebecca works in participatory photography programs in southern California and Tijuana, Mexico. She is the founder and coordinator of Las Photos Project, the first Mexican photography mentorship program for young Latinas. This video serves as a proof-of-concept product of such endeavors that will promote and surface the collections and their role in supporting new artists, burgeoning research, and community enthusiasts.